Pina Colada

TIPS & MUSINGS (slash “WORTH IT/NOT WORTH IT”)

A normal blender, even a nice one with hundreds of watts of power, just can’t create the kind of smooth slushy consistency you get when you order a piña colada from a bar – the kind of consistency where you can plop a cherry on the drink’s surface and it just stays there. Instead, the home-blender version starts out with more of quicksand consistency that swallows up your cherry and melts into a pure liquid within a few minutes. The first couple of sips are still good, even though not quite like a pina you’d get at beach bar, but then the ice melts depressingly fast. [peekaboo_content]

I tried everything — using cream, using egg white, pre-crushing the ice. None of those techniques helps, and they mess with the classic piña colada flavor. I even got a new blender thinking the failure may be due to the fact that I had a vintage (ie, from my childhood 30 years ago) Osterizer, but the new model fared no better.

In desperation I finally called a tiki bar and asked how they managed to keep their pina from melting. They said, oh, of course they use a special, restaurant-grade blender to get that slushy consistency and that you just can’t get the same thing from the blenders you use at home. OH, FINE. So you know what? Homemade Pina Colada – Not worth it. Let’s leave this one to the pros.
[/peekaboo_content][peekaboo]Content [/peekaboo]

Recipe

A (frumpy) Pina Colada

INGREDIENTS

3 oz White rum (some brands call it “silver” rum)

0.5 oz Dark rum (some brands call it “black” or “blackstrap” rum)

4 oz Cream of coconut (must be the sweetened kind, such as Coco Lopez or Goya brands)

4 oz Pineapple juice (canned is fine)

1 Maraschino cherry (the artificial-looking fire-engine red kind is called for here)

2 cups ice

DIRECTIONS

Add the white rum, cream of coconut, and pineapple juice to a blender, and blend to mix.

Add the ice and blend on the highest setting until smooth.

Pour into glasses, float the dark rum on top.

Then take a cherry from the jar, getting a couple drops of the maraschino liquid with it, and use the cherry to swirl the dark rum around the surface of the drink for a couple seconds so that the rum and bit of red maraschino liquid coat the top of the drink, and then set the cherry in the drink.

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About Elettra

Elettra Wiedemann is the founder of Impatient Foodie, a food site that navigates her desire to marry Slow Food ideals with the realities of fast paced, urban life. Within just a few months of launch in summer of 2014, Impatient Foodie was featured in numerous publications including Vogue, The New York Post, The Daily Mail (UK) Elle US, Elle China, Yahoo Food, Yahoo News, Madame Figaro, and Racked, ManRepeller, and Food & Wine Magazine.